Sunday, March 9, 2014

Bright Ideas: Organizing Math Stations

I am SO excited to link up with some amazing bloggers to bring you a few Bright Ideas from my very own classroom!

For this episode of Bright Ideas, I am sharing how I organize math stations in my second grade classroom.

Be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom of this post so that you can hop onto more Bright Ideas!

After an unbelievable amount of trial and error, I have finally the stations themselves down pat. I have 5 math station bins. All of my math stations are a review of the skills we have already practiced. I put activities in the bins based on how much time it will take students to complete them. I aim for a goal of 20 minutes per math station.I keep a chart on the wall above the math stations as a handy reference guide. Sometimes students do not finish their daily station and will need to finish it later.I typically change out stations every week.You can find the bins I purchased for an affordable price here. I love them. They have held up amazingly.

I HAD to add some fancy writing to the pictures above because, let's face it, my organization here is NOT attractive! I know how it is to spend TONS of money just to keep it cute, but sometimes it is just not worth it. Inside
the math bins, each station is kept in a gallon bag with directions and
all of its pieces. I ALWAYS have gallon bags handy and they are
see-thru so you know if it has been cleaned up properly. Once we are finished with the math stations I put all of the gallon bags into UBE's (ugly brown envelopes). I sort my stations by month. I throw all of the UBE's into the bottom of my filing cabinet until the following year.

Groups are extremely flexible in my classroom. They can change from week to week. Notice in the picture above that I have only assigned kids to stations for Thursday. I move the groups daily rather than keeping a set schedule, so that I can have flexibility from day to day. For example, on this particular week we had an ice day on Wednesday. If we HAD a set schedule it would be totally thrown off. Thanks for hopping by! Be sure to stop by again next time for my next Bright Ideas post: Let's Give Them Something to Math Talk About!

Ready to hop to the next Bright Idea?

Click on the graphic below to hop over to Emily's blog & learn how to integrate the writing process into your reading block!

I love math AND organization, so this post was heavenly! I'd like to nominate you for the Sunshine Blogger Award! I enjoy reading your ideas on your blog! Visit my blog for all of the details if you choose to accept and participate. It takes a little work, but it was fun to share about myself and get the chance to learn more about other people in this amazing teacher bloggy world!

Ok, so I just found your pin to this on pinterest! I love your math bins! I love hearing new ideas to add to my teacher toolkit. I also do math game envelopes which don't cost me a lot of money but are still cute and functional! I find that they help keep my students organized, and help foster independence within the classroom as well! I would love it if you would check it out! :) http://www.appleyeverafter.com/p/blog-page.html